U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Carl Augustus Hansberry, Sr. in the case of Hansberry v. Lee. Although the decision enables the Hansberry’s to remain in their home in Woodlawn and opens new homes to African Americans in Chicago, restrictive covenants remain legal

1941

Paul Robeson is placed under FBI surveillance

December 7, 1941

The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The United States enters World War II

1942

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial organization with the goal of obtaining racial equality in America through nonviolent resistance, founded in Chicago

November 3, 1945

Willie McGee, a married, African American, father of four, is arrested for the rape of Wilmetta Hawkins, a white woman

1946

Joseph McCarthy is elected to U.S. Senate

March 11, 1946

Carl Augustus Hansberry, Sr. dies suddenly in Mexico of a cerebral hemorrhage while planning to move his family there

1947

HUAC begins first round of hearings

January 1948

Lorraine Hansberry enrolls at the University of Wisconsin

April 1948

Lorraine Hansberry attends a performance of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock at the University of Wisconsin, inspiring her to become involved in theater

Lorraine Hansberry participates in the Henry Wallace campaign. Wallace runs as a Progressive Party candidate for president

July 26, 1948

President Harry Truman ends racial segregation in the U.S. military with Executive Order 9981

September 1948

Lorraine Hansberry joins the Communist Party

November 1948

Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace loses his run for president to incumbent President Harry S. Truman

August 29, 1949

The Soviet Union has its first successful nuclear weapon test

October 1, 1949

Mao Zedong forms the People’s Republic of China

August 27, 1949

Paul Robeson's arrival in Peekskill, NY for a concert triggers a riot

1950

Lorraine Hansberry leaves the University of Wisconsin to pursue "an education of another kind"

July 25, 1950

Paul Robeson's attempt to renew his passport is denied by the State Department

August 16, 1950

Sidney Poitier stars in No Way Out, his first leading role

1950

Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights organizations, is founded in Los Angeles

Fall 1950

Lorraine Hansberry moves to New York City

September 1950

Lorraine Hansberry's poem "Flag from a Kitchenette Window," is published in Masses & Mainstream, an American Marxist monthly

November 1950

Paul Robeson founds Freedom newspaper in Harlem, publishing an "introductory issue" with the editor Louis Burnham. Lorraine Hansberry works for the paper as a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant"

1951

Robert Nemiroff receives his Bachelor of Arts degree from NYU

1951

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) holds its second round of hearings

January 1951

First issue of Freedom is published

Spring 1951

Lorraine Hansberry travels to Mississippi with a delegation of women to petition the Governor for a stay of execution for Willie McGee

May 8, 1951

Willie McGee is executed after protests on his behalf and several stays of execution

July 1951

Lorraine's poem about Willie McGee's execution, "Lynchsong," is published in Masses & Mainstream

Lorraine Hansberry travels to Montevideo, Uruguay to speak on behalf of Paul Robeson at the Intercontinental Peace Conference. Her passport is revoked upon her return to the U.S. and the FBI begins lifelong surveillance of her

July 1952

Lorraine Hansberry meets Robert Nemiroff

November 4, 1952

Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president

December 1952

Lorraine Hansberry resigns from full time work at Freedom to focus on creative writing

1953

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is published in the U.S.

1953

Diana Sands makes her debut as Juliet in the off-Broadway production of An Evening With Will Shakespeare

Lorraine Hansberry and Robert Nemiroff join protesters against the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted for treason for selling nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union

June 20, 1953

Lorraine Hansberry marries Robert Nemiroff in her mother's home in Chicago

September 24, 1953

Louis Gossett, Jr. makes his Broadway debut in Take a Giant Step as Spencer Scott

May 17, 1954

United States Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education, that "separate but equal" doctrine regarding school segregation is unconstitutional

November 24, 1954

Medgar Evers is named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi

February 1955

Dorothy Dandridge becomes the first Black woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Carmen Jones

June 1955

Freedom newspaper ends publication

August 28, 1955

14 year old Emmett Till is lynched by white men in Mississippi for flirting with a white, female store clerk

October 1955

Village Voice begins publication

October 1955

Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), a lesbian organization, is founded in San Francisco

December 1, 1955

Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, sparking the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott

October 1956

Lorraine Hansberry is able to quit her part-time work and focus on writing after the songwriting success of her husband and his college friend Burt D'Lugoff. "Cindy, Oh Cindy," written using pseudonyms, is released by Vince Martin and the Tarriers and Eddie Fisher

1957

Lorraine Hansberry and Robert Nemiroff secretly separate

January 10, 1957

Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele and Fred L. Shuttlesworth form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization dedicated to nonviolent resistance and founded to coordinate the actions of protest groups throughout the South

Fall 1957

Lorraine Hansberry holds a dinner party with Phil Rose and Burt D'Lugoff to read her first draft of the play that became A Raisin in the Sun. Phil Rose wants to produce it and options the play for $500. Rose gets his friend Sidney Poitier to sign onto Hansberry's play, and Poitier, in turn, recommends Lloyd Richards as its director

September 1957

The first issue of The Ladder is published by the Daughters of Bilitis

September 4, 1957

Nine Black students integrate Little Rock High School

September 9, 1957

President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law

March 1958

Lorraine Hansberry writes a short story called "The Budget" for ONE Magazine under the pseudonym Emily Jones

September 1958

Lorraine Hansberry writes a short story called "Chanson du Konallis" for The Ladder under the pseudonym Emily Jones

Fall 1958

Nearly 1,000 Black actors show up for auditions for A Raisin in the Sun

December 1958

Lorraine Hansberry writes two short stories – "The Anticipation of Eve" and "Renascence" – for ONE Magazine under the pseudonym Emily Jones

January 21, 1959

A Raisin in the Sun has its first public performance at the Shubert Theater in New Haven, Connecticut as part of a four-night tryout

January 26, 1959

A Raisin in the Sun begins a two-week tryout run at the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia, PA. Writer James Baldwin attends a performance, later writing about witnessing theater history. The FBI sends an agent to assess the play for Communist influences

February 10, 1959

A Raisin in the Sun its final tryout, a four-week run at the Blackstone Theater in Chicago, IL

February 1959

Sidney Poitier is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in The Defiant Ones

March 1, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry gives the keynote speech titled "The Negro Writer and His Roots" at the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) Negro Writers Conference at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York

March 11, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun premieres on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater

April 7, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry wins the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for her play A Raisin in the Sun

April 9, 1959

David Attie photographs Lorraine Hansberry in her Bleecker Street apartment for Vogue

April 26, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry and Lloyd Richards are among the guests at a roundtable discussion on the state of Broadway on David Susskind's Open End television show

May 3, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry's television appearance on the public affairs program Look Up and Live is broadcast

May 8, 1959

Mike Wallace interviews Lorraine Hansberry, but the interview never airs

May 12, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry is interviewed by Studs Terkel for his radio show in Chicago

May 12, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry gives a lecture about American drama at Roosevelt University in Chicago for the school's Women's Scholarship Association

May 26, 1959

Lorraine Hansberry and film director Otto Preminger appear on At Random, Irv Kupcinet's local weekly television conversation on Chicago's WBBM. The conversation becomes heated as Hansberry describes Preminger's film Porgy and Bess as “bad art” for its depiction of racial stereotypes

Spring 1959

Random House publishes A Raisin in the Sun

August 1959

Lorraine completes her teleplay The Drinking Gourd, for an NBC series commemorating the centennial of the Civil War. The series is cancelled before production begins due to lack of interest from funders

August 1959

Lorraine Hansberry completes the screenplay for A Raisin in the Sun

August 2, 1959

Ossie Davis replaces Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun. Poitier starred in 198 performances

October 19, 1959

A Raisin in the Sun moves to the Belasco Theater

1960

Lorraine Hansberry uses money from the success of A Raisin in the Sun to purchase a home at 112 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, where Burt D'Lugoff and Hansberry's on-again off-again partner Dorothy Secules live

February 1, 1960

Black students (The Greensboro Four) hold sit-ins at Woolworth Store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina

February 12, 1960

Former Freedom editor Louis E. Burnham dies at age 45 of a heart attack

March 25, 1960

Lorraine Hansberry appears on the The Mitch Miller Show on WCBS radio

April 15, 1960

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University to provide young African Americans a place within the Civil Rights Movement

June 25, 1960

A Raisin in the Sun ends its Broadway run after 530 performances

November 8, 1960

John F. Kennedy is elected president

May 1961

The film version of A Raisin in the Sun premieres at the Cannes Film Festival and wins the Gary Cooper Award for Human Values

May 4, 1961

The Freedom Rides begin in order to test the new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel

May 21, 1961

Lorraine Hansberry and Lloyd Richards discuss their work, and a scene of Hansberry's work-in-progress, Toussaint is performed on Playwright at Work, a television series hosted by Frank Perry

May 29, 1961

The film version of A Raisin in the Sun is released by Columbia Pictures in the U.S.

June 7, 1961

Lorraine Hansberry is interviewed by Eleanor Fisher for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)

August 4, 1961

An interview of Lorraine Hansberry by Patricia Marx is broadcast on WNYC

August 9, 1962

Lorraine Hansberry moves to Croton-on-Hudson, NY

October 24, 1962

Lorraine Hansberry speaks at an anti-HUAC rally, delivering her "My Government is Wrong" speech

January 14, 1963

Alabama Governor George Wallace delivers his inaugural address in which he says, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever"

April 9, 1963

Lorraine Hansberry has an attack and collapses in pain. She is subsequently hospitalized for 10 days, during which time doctors diagnose her with cancer. Hansberry is told she has anemia and bleeding ulcers

April 12, 1963

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is arrested and jailed in Birmingham and begins writing "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"

May 3, 1963

Birmingham authorities use dogs and high-pressure fire hoses to repel demonstrators, many of whom were school-aged children taking part in the Children's Crusade. The Children's Crusade was a campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to use young people trained in nonviolent tactics to bring about the end of segregation in Birmingham. These children were also arrested by the hundreds between May 2 and 10

May 11, 1963

A.G. Gaston Motel, where Martin Luther King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy were staying, and King's brother's home in Birmingham are bombed, sparking a riot

May 24, 1963

A meeting between Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and a handful of civil rights activists, entertainers and artists, including Lorraine Hansberry, to discuss racial tensions is held at the Kennedy’s Manhattan apartment

Lorraine Hansberry, Nina Simone and several other influential people attend a press conference at the home of actor and activist Theodore Bikel in order to publicize the upcoming Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) benefit concert at Carnegie Hall

June 11, 1963

Alabama Governor George Wallace personally attempts to block Vivian Malone and James A. Hood from integrating the University of Alabama. In an address, President John F. Kennedy calls civil rights a "moral issue"

June 12, 1963

Medgar Evers, NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, is assassinated in his driveway hours after President Kennedy's address

June 16, 1963

Lorraine Hansberry chairs a fundraiser in Croton-on-Hudson to raise money for civil rights organizations' work in the south. The event raises $5,000, some of which goes towards purchasing the Ford station wagon driven by Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney the following summer

June 21, 1963

Lorraine Hansberry and a group of celebrities sponsor a benefit concert for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), starring Mahalia Jackson and the Freedom Singers at Carnegie Hall

June 24, 1963

Lorraine Hansberry has an unsuccessful operation in New York

August 2, 1963

Lorraine Hansberry undergoes surgery at the Lahey Clinic at New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts

August 27, 1963

W.E.B. DuBois dies in Ghana

August 28, 1963

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brings over 200,000 to Washington, DC. The event is best known for King's "I Have a Dream Speech.". Lorraine Hansberry is unable to attend as she is recovering from surgery at her home in Croton-on-Hudson

September 15, 1963

Four young girls are killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church by KKK members

November 22, 1963

President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in later that day

1964

The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality, a fundraising book for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), comprised of photos with commentary by Lorraine Hansberry, is published by Simon & Schuster

March 10, 1964

Robert Nemiroff obtains a divorce from Lorraine Hansberry in Mexico

April 13, 1964

Sidney Poitier becomes the first Black person to win an Oscar for best actor for his role in Lilies of the Field

Summer 1964

Freedom Summer, a voter registration campaign in Mississippi, launches with hundreds of volunteers from across the country

May 1, 1964

Lorraine Hansberry, released from the hospital for the afternoon, delivers what becomes known as the "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black" speech to winners of a writing contest sponsored by the United Negro College Fund

June 15, 1964

Lorraine Hansberry leaves her sickbed to argue for a militant commitment to Black causes as a participant in "The Black Revolution and the White Backlash," a Town Hall debate between Black artists and white liberals. The event is sponsored by the Association of Artists for Freedom, of which Lorraine is a member

June 21, 1964

Freedom Summer civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner go missing in Mississippi. The three are last seen in the Ford station wagon purchased with proceeds from Hansberry's fundraiser

June 23, 1964

The Ford station wagon, purchased with proceeds from Lorraine Hansberry's fundraiser and driven by Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, is discovered, burned, in a swampy area near Philadelphia, Mississippi

July 2, 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964

August 4, 1964

The bodies of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner are discovered by federal investigators in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi

September 28, 1964

Lorraine Lorraine Hansberry names Robert Nemiroff literary executor of her will

October 1964

Lorraine Hansberry moves to the Hotel Victoria on Seventh Avenue to be near rehearsals of her second Broadway play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window

OCtober 15, 1964

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window opens at the Longacre Theatre, co-produced by Robert Nemiroff and Burt D'Lugoff and directed by Peter Kass. Lorraine Hansberry attends opening night

October 20, 1964

Lorraine Hansberry loses her sight, has convulsions and lapses into a coma as her brain is affected by the cancer. Two days later she regains sight and some movement

October 21, 1964

Newspapers in New York and Chicago publish that Lorraine Hansberry is critically ill

November 1964

Prompted by Robert Nemiroff, Mel Brooks and wife Anne Bancroft open up their home for a midnight strategy meeting to keep The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which was struggling at the box office, open. The unusual celebrity campaign makes the play the longest-running show of that season

December 22, 1964

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window moves from the Longacre Theatre to the Henry Miller Theatre

January 12, 1965

Lorraine Hansberry dies of cancer of the duodenum at the age of 34 at University Hospital. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window closes

January 15, 1965

Lorraine Hansberry's memorial service is held at the Church of the Master in Harlem. Over 600 people attend despite a huge blizzard, including Malcolm X, Ossie Davis, Diana Sands and Sammy Davis, Jr. Ruby Dee and Shelley Winters speak. Paul Robeson delivers the eulogy. Nina Simone performs. And a telegram from Martin Luther King, Jr. is read. James Baldwin, although not able to attend, sends his condolences to Robert Nemiroff and the Hansberry family, saying, "I think we must resolve not to fail her, for she certainly did not fail us." Lorraine Hansberry is buried in Croton-on-Hudson at Bethel Cemetery

February 21, 1965

Malcolm X is assassinated

August 6, 1965

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act

January 2, 1969

To Be Young, Gifted and Black, a play about the life of Lorraine Hansberry using her own words, compiled by Robert Nemiroff, is first performed off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre

April 4, 1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated

June 22, 1969

Nina Simone performs "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" for the first time at a Morgan State College jazz festival. The song is inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's words

November 15, 1970

Les Blancs, an unfinished play by Lorraine Hansberry about colonialism set in Africa and edited by Robert Nemiroff, opens at Broadway's Longacre Theatre. It runs for one month and has 40 performances

1972

Robert Nemiroff edits and publishes Les Blancs

1972

Robert Nemiroff edits and publishes To Be Young, Gifted and Black

1976

Lorraine is publicly identified as a queer signifier when Barbara Grier, former editor of the lesbian periodical The Ladder, names her as the author of two 1957 letters to the publication

January 23, 1976

Paul Robeson dies of a stroke

December 1, 1987

James Baldwin dies of cancer

1989

PBS premieres A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Bill Duke and produced by Chiz Schultz for American Playhouse. Danny Glover and Esther Rolle star in the television film

1991

Robert Nemiroff dies of cancer

April 26, 2004

A revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Kenny Leon, opens on Broadway at the Royale Theatre. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Sanaa Lathan star. The cast reprise their roles for the 2008 ABC television movie

April 3, 2014

A revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Kenny Leon, opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre for the play's 50th anniversary. Denzel Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Sophie Okonedo and Anika Noni Rose star